Computerized Motion Analysis of the Aortic Arch to Assess the Influence of Pathologies, Supraaortic Transposition, and Stent-Graft Placement on its Deformation Patterns During the Cardiac Cycle
Funded by the Austrian National Bank Anniversary Fund
Team: Ernst Schwartz, Johannes Holfeld, Roman Gottardi, Martin Czerny, Philipp Peloschek, Christian Loewe, Georg Langs
Only about 25 percent of patients who get to the hospital with a ruptured thoracic aortic aneurysm will survive. For this reason, it is crucial to treat aneurysms early, in order to prevent rupture. Although exciting efforts in the treatment of aneurysms of the thoracic aorta could be observed during the last decade due to the availability of endovascular and combined endovascular and surgical teratment options, this treatment is not without risks: stent-graft migration causing reperfusion of the aneurysm or aortic dissection following stent-graft placement have been described. A relationship between these complications and aortic movement during the heart cycle is possible.

Thus, the aim of the project AortaMotion is the development and application of a computerized system to assess the cardiac cycle dependent deformation dynamics of the thoracic aorta with ECG-gated 64-row multidetector-computed tomography angiography.
Recent publications:
- E. Schwartz, R. J. Holfeld, M. Czerny, C. Loewe, Georg Langs. Towards Predicting the Effects of Stent-Grafting on the Motion of the Thoracic Aorta. Proceedings of the 2012 MICCAI Workshop on Computer Assisted Stenting (to appear)
- E. Schwartz, J. Holfeld, M. Czerny, C. Loewe, G. Langs. Visualizing Changes in Vessel Wall Dynamics due to Stent-Grafting in the Aortic Arch. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging 2012.
- G. Langs, N. Paragios, P. Desgranges, A. Rahmouni, H. Kobeiter. Learning Deformation and Structure Simultaneously: In Situ Endograft Deformation Analysis. Information Processing in Medical Imaging 2011, pp.135-146
- E. Schwartz, J. Holfeld, M. Czerny, C. Loewe, G. Langs. Evaluating deformation patterns of the thoracic Aorta in gated CTA sequence. in Proc. ISBI 2010
- E. Schwartz, G. Langs, J. Holfeld, R. Gottardi, C. Loewe, P. Peloschek, M. Czerny. Segmentation and Deformation Analysis of the Aorta in Gated CTA sequences in a MDL Framework. in Proc. of MIUA 2009. Winner Best Scientific Paper Award